RSS Feed MenuOn Thursday, July 27, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced the abandonment of comprehensive climate and energy legislation despite months of effort. Environmental groups and political pundits were quick to point fingers, with everyone from the fossil fuel industry to Republican and moderate Democratic senators to Reid himself held responsible. But significant ire has actually been reserved for President Barack Obama, with Rolling Stone citing the possibility that he “doesn’t have the spine for this fight.” Politico encapsulated the widespread criticism of the president:
Many say it was Obama who didn’t do enough to make the climate bill a big enough priority, allowing other monster big-ticket items like the economic stimulus, health care and Wall Street reform to suck up all the oxygen and leaving environmentalists grasping for straws too late in the game – well past the expiration date for other big accomplishments during the 111th Congress. “The absence of direct, intense presidential leadership doomed this process,” said Eric Pooley, author of “Climate War,” a just-published book that chronicles the past three years of debate on global warming. “We did have a window there, and now the window is shut.”
The San Francisco Chronicle, meanwhile, observed that President Obama had been “largely AWOL in the fight, didn’t speak up in the final innings, though his run for the White House was partly built on environmental appeals.” In October 2008, then-candidate Obama did in fact declare “There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy…That’s going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office.” Nevertheless, the president – armed with a Democratic Congress amidst the worst environmental disaster in the nation’s history – could not get the job done.
New York Times blogger Andrew Revkin presented an intriguing idea: “Could it be that the White House has concluded what some political analysts have quietly told me — that only a Republican president could muster the Senate votes to pass a meaningful climate bill?” The cap-and-trade framework that dominates the contemporary debate over climate legislation, after all, was partly an invention of the first Bush administration. Furthermore, a study found that “over the last four decades, almost 70 percent of major federal environmental protection legislation has been brought about by the combination of a Republican president and an all-Democratic Congress.” And prior to 2010, some of the most meaningful legislative proposals on the subject – including the Climate Stewardship Acts of 2003, 2005, and 2007 and the Climate Security Act of 2008 – were authored by Republicans, Senators John McCain and John Warner, respectively. President Obama’s short stint in the Senate, of course, saw no such leadership on his part.
Bradford Plumer of The New Republic goes as far as to posit, “If McCain had won in 2008, with Democrats controlling both the House and Senate, then it’s quite possible we’d have a climate bill by now.” The political reality is that with environmentalism having long been a province of the left, a liberal like President Obama will always be hard-pressed to win Republican votes for climate legislation in Congress, but a more moderate Republican president in the vein of McCain can attract support from both sides of the aisle. Counterintuitive though it may be, Americans looking for comprehensive climate and energy legislation may have to turn to a Republican president to get the job done.
Superdave12 // Aug 3, 2010 at 11:04 am
That’s cute, but nonsense. If only the GOP can act on climate change: We are all dead.
msmilack // Aug 3, 2010 at 11:09 am
I am confused by this argument. In general terms, since the Republicans are responsible for the delay in passing necessary legislation on the environment, how does anyone logically deduce that only they can fix it? That is like the GOP announcing that they have actual ideas and an agenda for governing only they won’t reveal either to the American public until after they are elected and take back the house and senate. Very few citizens would at this point allow the Republicans to be in charge of any area that is important. The GOP has demonstrated more times than I care to remember that it has NO INTEREST IN GOVERNING: that it is interested in winning only.
JJWFromME // Aug 3, 2010 at 11:13 am
Bush said he’d act on CO2. Then when elected, Psych!
Madeline // Aug 3, 2010 at 11:33 am
Ah, the old “only Nixon can go to China” argument.
Hey, remember prior to 2008 when there was a general consensus amongst “political analysts” that the first minority or female president would “have to” be Republican?
quanta // Aug 3, 2010 at 11:37 am
The character of the republican and democrat parties have changed tremendously throughout the last four decades. The study you cite mentions no legislation done with a republican president in the last two decades (mostly because Bush failed to do anything). Also, climate change is a very different issue from say, toxic waste control, or fisheries conservation, or safe drinking water, or any number of the pieces of legislation that study cites. Complete misuse of statistics.
PracticalGirl // Aug 3, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Not sure that the Democrats can affect climate change, but absolutely certain that the GOP can’t. They, as a so-called leadership group, deny it exists, just like they denied that there could ever be massive, negative consequences from off-shore drilling. And we see what their stewardship has wrought in the Gulf. Please, GOD, let’s not have the GOPers trying to “fix” the air or our water sources.
cporet // Aug 3, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Oh my, now conservatives are quoting Rolling Stone. What a fall.
Stewardship // Aug 3, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Again, please visit http://www.climateconservative.org to learn about the conservative and Republican footings of climate policy. Climate policy might even have a better chance in the Senate in January if a couple wayward Senators circle back to long-held positions (abandoned in recent months due to tea party externals) and if a couple or three Republicans of like-mind win seats from Dems. The underlying message is correct….it will take a Scott Brown, a Lindsey Graham, or a John McCain to lead the effort. Doesn’t appear the current President really cares, but I guess he’d sign a bill if put in front of him.
busboy33 // Aug 3, 2010 at 2:20 pm
The author does have a point.
Nobody can make the GOP stop obstructing everything except the GOP.
JJWFromME // Aug 3, 2010 at 2:32 pm
busboy33 wins the thread.
Bebe99 // Aug 3, 2010 at 3:45 pm
The misuse of the noun democrat in place of the adjective democratic has a really jarring grammatical effect. It’s been intentionally misused for such a long time that people think they are speaking/writing correctly when they say “Democrat Senators” instead of “Democratic Senators.” It is disturbing to see Mr. Yin using the incorrect form of the word, and I can only assume he is not aware of his error. It sounds ignorant to those of us who don’t agree that it is a great joke to mispronounce the name of your opponents’ party.
GOP Blocks Scaled-Back Energy Bill – CBS News | Rethink the GOP // Aug 3, 2010 at 4:30 pm
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LFC // Aug 3, 2010 at 5:11 pm
… it will take a Scott Brown, a Lindsey Graham, or a John McCain to lead the effort.
John McCain is an opportunist of the lowest order. Mr. Mavericky is now a Tea Party Pinhead. Don’t hold your breath that he’ll do anything for anybody except John McCain.
Clifton Yin // Aug 3, 2010 at 5:13 pm
re. Bebe99
It was definitely an oversight on my part! I apologize – you’re absolutely right when you point out that intentional mispronunciations are cheap shots.
sinz54 // Aug 3, 2010 at 8:37 pm
quanta: Also, climate change is a very different issue from say, toxic waste control, or fisheries conservation, or safe drinking water, or any number of the pieces of legislation that study cites.
Climate change does have certain resemblances to the acid rain problem.
And it was a Republican president, Bush Senior, who signed legislation in 1990 to deal with it. By an emissions trading scheme, no less.
Prior to that, it was another Republican president, Reagan, who signed the Montreal Protocol which put restrictions on substances that depleted the ozone layer in the atmosphere.
The difference between these presidents and somebody like McCain, is that McCain has always cherished his reputation as a “maverick” (or a RINO, or independent-minded)–someone whom the GOP base doesn’t consider to be one of their own. So they would (and did) view McCain’s embrace of cap-and-trade as just another example of his deserting the GOP base.
The GOP base didn’t have that problem with Reagan or Bush Senior in the 1980-1990 time period, because Reagan and Bush Senior had worked hard to cultivate the GOP base throughout their careers.
So if you’re looking for a Republican president to pass climate change legislation, it would really have to be someone whom the GOP base already loves as one of their own.
A President Sarah Palin could make the GOP base swallow climate-change legislation.
A President McCain could not.
John Q // Aug 3, 2010 at 10:22 pm
It’s kinda like the 1970s, when only a Republican president could open our relations with China. If a Democratic president had tried it, he’d have been slaughtered by the Republicans. Now, Republicans are content to have good relations with China.
Similarly, I expect that forty years from now Republicans will be content with measures we’ll be taking to preserve the planet. The difficulty is getting from here to there in an irrationally partisan environment where good science is buried under manufactured objections like “climategate”.
sdspringy // Aug 3, 2010 at 11:11 pm
The foolishness of the concept that CO2 reductions can be obtained via cap & trade legislation is similar to the foolishness of HCR implementation reducing medical costs.
There is no CO2 reduction scheme that has ever reduced CO2 anywhere on the planet. Kyoto is a joke, European attempts at cap & trade have failed. They have only increased the cost of energy and any thing that uses electrical energy to manufacture a product.
Since the science of measuring global CO2 levels is fraudulant and the methods used to measure global temperatures in question why would anyone promote a government scheme to reduce either.
No Republican will sign a bill implementing Cap & Trade.
busboy33 // Aug 4, 2010 at 3:22 am
@sdspringy:
“No Republican will sign a bill implementing Cap & Trade.”
Then why did McCain make it part of his Presidential Campaign? Or was the point to push for something that they didn’t want?